[Meanblock]

I'm in Santa Cruz, could i swing by some time this week to take a look and ask some questions about it?

 

[pnjunction]

Sure, I am actually heading to the bay now, planning to be back Friday afternoon (after the rainstorm which would be a lousy time to meet anyhow). Feel free to PM me also. Thanks.

 

[*sean*]

So 10 kW of pack got you about 60 miles. Wow. Was that at highway speeds? Can you describe the motor used and how you configured it? And what did you end up using for a controller? Why are you moving on?

 

[pnjunction]

You got it... I had about 30kwh of pack which made for a very easy and anxiety free 150mile practical range for general driving without pushing to very low SOCs, and quite practical to exceed that substantially with care, like on a road trip just going in one jaunt (not losing energy to standby loss, etc). The car really made you super aware of all the factors that impact efficiency... speed obviously, I liked cruising in 4th gear at 55-65mph, gradient (though that generally gets recouped), rolling resistance (efficiency tanked in the rain), and air density particularly. All the stuff you feel in the ICE car, but just more directly due to the 'linearity' of the EV powertrain. Sometimes the car would just absolutely sail, and sometimes it could really struggle. On my big road trip adventure (Livermore to Long Beach) I had a 145 mile stint (Livermore to Fresno) on the freeway where I averaged 127wh/mi... it was rarely that good, but also rarely worse than around 180.

For motor I used a couple configurations of Zero Motorcycles motors, coupled to the trans input shaft without a clutch. I started out with a single 7cm motor (just the same as used on the '16-22 Zero SR and DSR), which I eventually added active circulated oil cooling to, and then changed it out for a 'two 7cm Zero motors on one shaft' motor aka 'the double stack'. That was more of a 'big block'... huge torque output, not as great on the top end. Being able to shift gears allowed that still to be a very practical setup, and it's what I took on the road-trip. The Zero motor rotor is optimized for low inertia which allowed the clutchless shifting (relying on the synchros to act on the freewheeling motor) to work pretty well in up and downshifting.

I used a Curtis 1239e motor controller.

Why am I moving on... it's been a tough one... the 'mission' for the project really evolved through the many iterations, but the build was always 'prototype grade' (hence why I stripped it as opposed to looking to pass it on whole). Through that iterative process I feel I centered in on exactly what I wanted to do with the project (hyper efficient BEV overland road tourer), but I think to take it to the next level it would require clean-sheeting the actual implementation of such and getting rid of difficult to source components, optimizing the integration with the car body and probably doing away with things like the clutchless shifting which is always a bit marginal-- it never made for a car that you could hand the keys to anyone and have them have an assured positive driving experience. Great for developing intuition for the powertrain parameters (five final drive ratios in one powertrain! Easy to try them all!) but the real solution needs to be more user friendly. While I have utmost respect for the stock Honda trans for holding up to the usage and performing incredibly well it also takes up a whole lot of space in the engine bay and makes packaging difficult.

And I got other things to drive

• '18 Clarity PHEV (also a first MY, Honda efficiency flagship, silver, occluded rear arches, and VIN ends in 619, coincidentally)... so that's my new DD. 4 door is more 'social', 4000lb car increases freeway battle survival chances. BEV fanatic I am, I still recognize the value in today's world to be able to suck down huge amounts of energy at the pump.
• '90 Miata EV conversion (you can work really hard to make an Insight into a sport car, or you can get a Miata... scratches the conversion EV itch, small car itch, etc)

Neither of these can capture the same magic of lowest absolute waste heat production while freeway travelling, which enables electric touring without relying on fragile DCFC infrastructure... I still find that mission incredibly compelling. But for the moment I need to lay it down. Maybe I'll be able to come back for that 'clean sheet'... I certainly know exactly what I'm going for spec wise at this point... and maybe a chance to complete my pokedex and get a dark blue car for that project

On the upside I will keep many memories and my 'forever insight':